After landing in the No. 2 spot in the state rankings for AAA, the Lumpkin County High School girls basketball team proved they belonged last week with three region wins by a combined score of 235-98, which earned them the No. 1 spot in this week’s official GHSA rankings.
The Indians started the week with a huge win over Cherokee Bluff at home by a score of 74-28 on Tuesday, January 5. On Friday, Lumpkin traveled to West Hall to face the Spartans, where they won by an astounding 79 points in a near triple-digit effort, silencing the Spartans 99-20.
Head coach David Dowse said that the formula to his team’s success, averaging a 45-point margin of victory in the three-game stretch, isn’t in emphasizing the offensive or defensive side of the ball, but letting good play on either side feed the other.
“The energy starts at the defensive end and when you’re turning teams over and getting some easy ones, shots tend to have a way of landing in the right spot,” Dowse said. “I’m pleased with both, but I think they’re intertwined, it’s not one or the other.”
Yet Dowse does have one real advantage when it comes to outscoring his opponents: his players.
“We’ve had some really good teams the last couple of years, but we haven’t been able to put five kids on the floor at the same time who truly could score,” he said. “Now I’m talking about scoring double-digits, potential for 20 a night, and we have that now.”
The Indians have three players averaging double-digit points per game, led by freshman Averie Jones following a 23-point performance on Friday.
“Averie’s a big part of that, but we truly have five kids out there [that can score],” Dowse said following Friday’s game against West Hall. “Tonight I think we had 23, 20, 16,15 and 15 from our starters. That’s hard to guard. Averie’s a big part of that.”
Dowse has watched six different players that have scored double digits in a game and five different players who have led the team in scoring in a game this season.
Having such a well-rounded team, Dowse credits his two seniors, Isabel Davenport and MaKenzie Caldwell, for helping to develop the younger players on the team.
“It’s huge...This is my fourth year so they’re the only two that’ve come through and spent all four years,” he said. “They know what it’s all about and they’re great mentors for these young kids. Every day’s not perfect and they each have some struggles, but they’ve got two kids that they can bounce ideas off of and share their struggles with and get honest feedback from kids that’ve been through it themselves.”
That senior leadership is evident not only on the court, but also while the two are not on the court, as the seniors often watch their teammates carry the load in the final minutes of the game when the result is well within reach. Dowse commends the excitement they have in watching their teammates score as a strong example of this leadership.
“I think they’re excited to see kids that don’t maybe get as many minutes have some success and have an opportunity to score when truthfully, they don’t have as many opportunities as them,” he said. “They’re more excited about their teammates having some success than scoring a hundred points.”
Dowse has managed to keep his team locked in, despite taking part in some blowout victories that could understandably cause a team to lose focus. The coach attributes the focus to their long term goal of winning a region championship and the tougher opponents, White County and Dawson County, that stand in their way.
“We know that in order for those games to be meaningful, we got to take care of business in games like this,” he said following the team’s Friday night win over West Hall. “We’ll be ready tomorrow.”
And they were.
With less than 24 hours rest, the team took on Dawson County back at the Longhouse in a makeup game rescheduled after Dawson decided to cancel the originally scheduled matchup earlier in the season due to COVID-19. In the crucial region game between two of the powers in region 7 AAA, Lumpkin once again came out victorious in a 62-50 battle, led by 18 points from Davenport.
The Indians were scheduled to face their rival White County Warriors on Tuesday, January 12 as of press time, however no official results were available. Lumpkin looks to host Flowery Branch on Friday, January 15 before heading down to Dawsonville to rematch the Tigers on Tuesday, January 19.
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